Media’s Frenzy over Stanton’s Ordination Repeats Repetitious Dialogue

Alysa Stanton, ordained June 6, is the first female African-American rabbi.  You know that, right?  It was kind of a big deal.  The basic facts were widely reported, and we, the dear readers, were tacitly entrusted with the task of understanding why this is such an important story and then of acknowledging the implications and drawing the appropriate conclusions.

Jvoices(.com), seconded by jewcy(.com), was dissatisfied with this treatment of Stanton’s story, which, like all stories linked to big issues (this time it’s racism), should have been an invitation to dialogue and introspection.

I was apprehensive at first: “disproportionate attention is paid to her gender, racial background, and path to Judaism when her work and character should receive equal coverage, if not be at the forefront” -  we know that her race is less important than her theology, but this doesn’t make it irrelevant.  Please don’t make this some kind of plea for silent mainstream acceptance on the basis of the belief in a post-racial fantasyland.  We’re past that kind of daydream, right? Please?

Well, as it turns out, we actually are.  The need to downplay Stanton’s race comes from the appropriate placement of her story into Judaism’s racial history.  This, in turn, requires the breakdown of the “systemic polarization” of race in America into black and white, omitting the in-between shades.  When we do that, we realize that Judaism, and its clergy, has a racially diverse history, and that Stanton’s ordination, while indeed the first of something, is not nearly as momentous as people want it to be.

But is that it, then? We’ve got Jewish clergy in all shades of brown, so it doesn’t matter that Stanton is black?  No: we’ve got Jewish clergy in all shades, and all shades matter. That is the point.

Now you’re allowed to ask why that matters.  Even though it shouldn’t.  Or should it?  The undercurrent implicit in all this is that the mainstream, popular (i.e. non-scholarly) history of Judaism has been “Ashkenaized” and that it’s time to undo the damage.  But does this consist of race becoming an axis along which Judaism is structured (along with denomination and geography, feel free to think of others), whereby we acknowledge race and its effect on the individual’s personal Jewish experience?  Or does it, in an appeal to our post-racial utopia, get a somewhat less pronounced treatment, lingering in the backs of our minds, but lingering nonetheless?  If we add another hyphen to American Jewish identity (black/Asian/hispanic/Indian/white/etc. – Jewish – American), will it act as a divisor, or will it serve to acknowledge forces that have long been ignored?

Or maybe it’s just been way too long since any of us actually went to shul.

-Isaac TheIntern